If Iran really had nuclear weapons would it mean the end of the world?

Cynical politicians are using apocalyptic visions of a nuclear-armed Iran to serve their strategic and domestic political agendas.

ON APRIL 21, Iran and six world powers resumed the final phase of nuclear talks after a preliminary framework deal reached earlier this month. Iran and the P5+1 countries — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — are expected to reach a final accord by the end of June.

Most of these fears are simply unfounded. In fact, even if Iran wanted a nuclear weapon and managed to obtain one, it would not be able to carry out a successful nuclear strike against Israel or the United States.

Iran’s primary challenge in targeting the US or Israel would be geographic. Roughly 1,100 miles separate the Islamic Republic from Israel’s borders. Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which maintain joint missile-defense pacts with Israel, occupy much of the intervening space. This means that a missile from Iran could easily be intercepted by one of these countries before it reaches Israel.

Israel also has other geographical advantages: It would be nearly impossible for Iran to strike Israel without killing large numbers of Palestinians in the process. Iran has been one of the most vocal and consistent supporters of the Palestinian cause. Thus it is unthinkable that Tehran would carry out a nuclear strike, which could annihilate the Palestinian territories. Nuclear fallout from such a strike could prove devastating to southern Lebanon and western Syria, causing immense harm to two of Iran’s key regional allies, Hezbollah and the Syrian regime.

A strike on the United States would be even less plausible. To reach the US, an Iranian missile would have to deliver a nuclear payload more than 6,000 miles. The capacity of Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missiles is nowhere near this range, and it won’t be for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the missile would have to make it through the network that protects Israel, cross the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic, all without being detected or intercepted by NATO, the US Air Force, the US Navy, US satellites and Washington’s robust missile defense systems.

Clearly, any attempted nuclear strike on Israel or the US is certain to fail. In fact, it would amount to suicide for Tehran. The regional and international response would be immediate, more or less unanimous and overwhelming in scale: The Islamic Republic would not survive.

Hawks contend that, even if it lacked the capacity to attack Israel or the US, Iran could provide highly enriched nuclear material to terrorist groups to be incorporated into a devastating dirty bomb that could be deployed against the US or Israel. But this scenario is unlikely for a number of reasons.

For one, Iran’s regional allies — including Hezbollah, Hamas and Yemen’s Houthis —are primarily nationalistic and rarely operate outside their home countries or their perceived national interests. Moreover, none of these groups have a demonstrated intent or capability to attack the US mainland. This is in part why US intelligence recently removed Iran and Hezbollah from its list of terrorism threats.

Moreover, dirty bombs are notweapons of mass destruction. A radiological dispersion device does not have much more explosive power than a conventional weapon. Moreover, the relatively small amounts of nuclear material emitted in the process are unlikely to pose a severe immediate or long-term health risk to the public.

Therefore, even if Iran’s proxies obtained nuclear material and decided to carry out a radiological attack in Israel or the United States, the effect would hardly be catastrophic. The consequences for Iran, on the other hand, would be.

The logic behind nuclear deterrence is that a country will be hesitant to carry out an attack against an adversary that possesses nuclear weapons, lest it use weapons of mass destruction in reprisal. However, given that Iran cannot carry out a successful nuclear strike against Israel or the United States under any conceivable circumstances, nuclear weapons would do little to deter Israel or the US from attacking Tehran.

On the contrary, if in violation of its international commitments, Iran makes concrete steps toward developing and testing a nuclear weapon or manages to obtain one, that could be used as sufficient justification for a military intervention to disarm and possibly dismantle the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s procurement of a nuclear weapon would result in its becoming a pariah state like North Korea, with increased isolation. This is in stark contrast to the military, economic, geopolitical and ideological superpower it is poised to become if fully integrated into the international community. Hence Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is right to suggest that nuclear weapons hold no strategic value for Tehran.